


No Fate, No Future

by Alixtii



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Age Difference, Angst and Feels, Army, Canon Het Relationships, Cheating, Cheating John, Child Soldiers, Cross-Generation Relationship, F/M, Fate/Destiny and the Absence Thereof, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Protagonist, Free Will, Infidelity, Introspection, Marriage, Married Couple, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Older Man/Younger Woman, Original Female Daughter, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, POV: Kate Brewster, Philandering Husband, Post Judgement Day, Present Tense, Resistance, Rise of the Machines, Sex with a Teenaged Girl, Sex with an Underaged Woman, Soldiers, Tech-Com, Time Travel, Trouble In Paradise, Young Allison, husband-wife relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:45:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There is no fate but what we make" is not the rallying cry of hope that John treats it as.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Fate, No Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seriousfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriousfic/gifts).



##  _2004 C.E._

"This is John Connor at Crystal Peak."

"Connor? What the hell is happening?" the voice asks. "Who's in charge there?"

"I am," John says, and you take his hand in his. And so begins your new life as Mrs. John Connor.

* * *

##  _2014 C.E._

The first time you meet the Reese boys, you're shocked at how young Kyle is, a shy 12-year-old staring out from shaggy brown hair as he hides behind his older, 19-year-old brother—in all likelihood, the only parent he's had since Judgment Day.

It seems a shame to know that this little boy will grow up only to be sent back to his certain death.

You say something of the effect to John, but he only looks at you like you are insane. "What do you mean?"

"Well, he's your father, right?" you ask, not sure if it's you or him who is missing something. "You're going to need to send him back to impregnate your mother."

"My mother and father only got to spend a very short time together," John says, you're not sure why: you already know this. "So she cherished every moment they spent together, every word he said to her, in her memory. And one of the things he told her was the date of Judgment Day: August 29, 1997." He looks at you, waits for the significance of his words to soak in.

"But that's not when it happened."

"No," John agrees, "it's not. So we have to figure that either Kyle was deliberately lying to my mother by giving her a date that was seven years too early, or that the future changed, Judgment Day was postponed, and the Kyle who met my mother isn't the same Kyle that you and I know."

John talks like this sometimes, about branching timelines and multiple universes, but you've never really understood any of it, it all going right over your head. "But this is the future the 101 who led us to Crystal Peak came from," you argue anyway.

John looks like you like he can't believe you could be that much of an idiot. "No, it's not," he contradicts, gently but firmly. "In that future, your dad was one of my chief lieutenants. In this timeline"—he shrugs—"he's dead."

"Then we weren't destined to be married," you say, understanding suddenly hitting you like a T-888's fist.

"Of course not," John says. "There is no fate but what we make, Kate."

It's something you've heard John say often enough, know it's an old phrase of his mothers', but still, hearing it now feels like the floor has dropped out from under you, as if something you knew was rock-solid and certain isn't, not anymore.

* * *

##  _2024 C.E._

You know that John is fucking the Young girl. Heh, "the Young girl"--talk about truth in advertising. But John is still John Connor, hero and leader of the Resistance, and if anyone else is bothered by the fact that a fifty-year-old man is taking a sixteen-year-old girl to bed, they're not about to speak up about it.

"Dad's under a lot of stress, you know," Sarah says, as if that somehow makes it okay for her father to be sleeping with a girl three years her junior. But then Sarah, born barely a year after Judgment Day, has never known a world with third-wave feminism and statutory rape laws. Instead, she's a good soldier—Sarah Kyla Connor, Captain, Tech-Com, DN38395—in her father's army.

In the world you live in, after all, the only Law is either John's or the machines'. And so if John decides to trade you in for the _very much_ younger model, it's not as if there's really all that much you can do about it except smile and pretend to be oblivious when even John has to know you know. How could you not?

In retrospect, you feel like you should have known that being married to the messianic savior of humanity would not be a fairytale romance from beginning to end, that John in the end was a man not a myth, with the feet of clay that that implied.

One time, you even find her in your quarters, dressed in only grey, stained bra and panties. "Mrs. Connor," she says in surprise at your entrance, jumping involuntarily to attention, her mind clearly racing to come up with an excuse, some possible explanation for what she could be doing in your bedroom in the middle day in just her underwear.

"Don't bother, you tell her," waving a dismissive hand. After all, she's just a girl; it's not her fault she happened to catch your husband's eye. You just hope she went to his bed willingly, full of adolescent infatuation and hero-worshipping puppy love, rather than being forced there against her will.

* * *

##  _2027 C.E._

When the Young girl gets captured by the machines, there's a part of you which can't help a feeling of vindication, while the rest of you hates that part for being so petty.

John, of course, insists on leading an op to get her back.

"With all due respect, sir, we can't risk you," Derek says. "You're too important to the Resistance."

John looks like he wants to argue, but you step in instead. "He's right," you hear yourself say. " _I'll_ lead the team."

Everyone looks at you with evident shock only rivalled by what you yourself feel, dumbfounded that apparently you're willing to risk your life in an operation whose sole purpose is rescuing your husband's girlfriend. But he loves her, needs her, and apparently despite everything that's happened, you still love _him_.

Well, ain't that a bitch.

* * *

"There is no fate but what we make" is not the rallying cry of hope that John treats it as, you've come to realize. It is a cry of despair among the abyss of meaningless. If there is no fate, no destiny, no karma or kismet, no god or divine Overseer watching over you, then there is only Skynet and the cold sequence of events twisted upon itself by temporal paradox after temporal paradox until there is not even the certainty of cause and effect anymore, just the absurd, tragic reality of life. It's absolute freedom, the ultimate license, purchased at the expense of any possible meaning or truth.

**Author's Note:**

> seriousfic asked for a crossover between T:TSCC and the movies. Now, I haven't seen _Salvation_ and don't plan to, because I get the sense from what I have heard that McG really doesn't understand how time travel would/could/should work in the Terminator universe, unlike say, Josh Friedman. But I've always had a sort of guilty love for _Rise of the Machines_ , so....


End file.
